Ehkili

Ehkili, a term of unknown origin applied by the inhabitants of Mahrah, Makalla, and some other districts of Hadramaut, S. Arabia, to their language, which is of great philological interest. It differs greatly from current Arabic, and represents, in a corrupt form, the primitive Himyaritic speech of Arabia, which survives also in the Tigre and other dialects of Abyssinia on the opposite side of the Red Sea. Ehkili is consequently one of the most primitive dialects of the primordial Semitic language, and in it are composed the numerous rock inscriptions scattered over S. Yemen and Hadramaut. From these imperfectly-deciphered inscriptions and from the specimens of Ehkili collected by Fresnel and others, it appears that Himyaritic differs more from Arabic than Arabic does from Hebrew, with which language it has much in common. (Fulgence Fresnel, Note sur la langue himyarite in Journal Asiatique, vi. 79; H. J. Carter, Notes on the Mahrah Tribe of Southern Arabia in Journal of Bombay Asiatic Society, ii., 1848, p. 339.)